Now in its seventh edition, the original volume of the bestselling Making Sense series is an indispensable research and writing guide for students in any discipline. Maintaining the signature straightforward style of the series, this updated edition outlines the general principles of style, grammar, and usage while covering such topics as how to conduct academic research, how to write essays, and how to properly document sources. Concise and accessible, with new information on technology-based research and group presentations, this latest edition continues to be an invaluable resource for students throughout their academic careers and beyond.

In British Singapore, municipal authorities and Asian communities faced off over numerous issues. Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore details these conflicts and how they shaped the city.

Searching for Books

When searching for books, try searching in the catalog for a specific city name combined with your topic. For example, city planning raleigh will find all results with city planning -- north carolina -- raleigh in the subject headings, and the most relevant materials related to planning in the city of Raleigh, NC. The following is a list of suggested subject headings:

Smith points out the ways the Plan continues to influence debates, even a century after its publication, about how to create a vibrant and habitable urban environment. Richly illustrated and incisively written, his insightful book will be indispensable to our understanding of Chicago, Daniel Burnham, and the emergence of the modern city.

Plans of Chicago , the inaugural publication of the Chicago-based Architects Research Foundation, uses the 1909 Plan as a precedent for reconnecting Chicago's center to outlying suburbs. As in Burnham's Plan, improved transportation and park systems will make Chicago both "the city that works" and a "City Beautiful."

Classic Plans - Radburn 1929

Author Jane Lyle Diepeveen traces Fair Lawn's history from its origins as a settlement at Sloterdam, a site of the developing Dutch Colonial architecture, to the innovative neighborhoods of Radburn, a cutting-edge planned American garden city.

This program thoroughly maps out the transformation of Paris during the 19th century from a stifling, congested city of narrow and winding streets to an aesthetically pleasing model of Industrial Age modernity (streaming film, 58 minutes).

This film covers the many forms suburbia has taken, like the first planned suburban development in Llewellyn Park, N.J.; detached dwellings in sylvan surroundings, with restrictive land use and minimum cost regulations (Olmstead and Vauz' Riverside); the company town, whose prototype is Pullman, IL.; a suburb like Forest Hills successfully inserted into the very heart of New York; and Levittown, PA, which addressed the problem of affordable individual housing for large masses and their automobiles (streaming film, 58 minutes).

An ongoing PBS series about the pioneers and innovators in the field of sustainable architecture. Each episode examines the built environment's effects — both ecological, and social — and the design innovations that can reduce buildings' contribution to climate change.
Episodes: 1-The Green Apple (NYC) | 2-Green for All | 3-The Green Machine (Chicago) | 4-Gray to Green (Boston's Big Dig) | 5-China: From Red to Green | 6-Deeper Shades of Green (streaming films, 27 minutes each).

The film uses the bitter struggle over equal housing rights in Yonkers, New York during the 1980s to show the 'massive resistance' the Civil Rights movement confronted when it moved North. Films on Video (available for viewing at the MRC.)

Through the voices of committed residents, activists and city officials, this award-winning documentary shows how a Boston community organized the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative and was able to create and carry out its own agenda for change. DVD | VHS.
Films on Video (available for viewing at the MRC.)

Michael Moore's first film documenting his efforts to meet General Motors chairman Roger Smith and to get Smith to visit Flint, Michigan to confront the effects of deindustrialization on Moore's hometown.

"China Blue, which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made–and kept–in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer." (from the PBS webpage. for the film)

This documentary captures how a community was betrayed by greed, political hypocrisy, and good intentions gone astray. Don Normark's haunting photographs evoke a lost Mexican-American village in the heart of downtown LA, razed in the 1950's to build an enormous low-income housing project. Instead, the federally purchased land was used for Dodger Stadium.

Using empty beer cans, old tires, plastic bottles and other garbage, iconoclastic architect Michael Reynolds, based in New Mexico, has been building ecologically sustainable structures for 35 years. Calling his structures "earthships," Reynolds has had conflicts with government officials over inflexible zoning and housing laws, but his architectural ideas were put to use in the Andaman Islands following the 2005 tsunami.

"The fourteen–acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country's most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14–acre oasis."

News Articles

It provides information on people, issues, and events in the local area or around the country. Updated daily, America's Newspapers offers tens of millions of current and archived full-text articles from newspapers nationwide in a single, fully searchable online database. It includes the complete electronic editions of 827 newspapers - with 75% of these sources not available in any other library database. The following national newspapers are included in this resource:

LexisNexis Academic is a web-based service that provides access to most of the information formerly available on the LexisNexis Educational Program (approximately 75% of the titles). It covers general, regional and international news, company news and financial information, legal information (including law reviews, case law and legal rulings), and other topics such as biographical information. Many of the files are full-text. LexisNexis Academic is a service of LexisNexis Academic & Library Solutions.

Newspaper Source Plus provides complete full-text coverage of 149 national and international newspapers, such as Christian Science Monitor, New York Times, Times (London), Toronto Star, Washington Post, and Washington Times.

Combines over 9,000 sources from the Dow Jones Interactive and Reuters Business Briefing to provide premium business content from 118 countries and in 22 languages. Factiva is very strong in trade journals and company reports. Includes:

1,500+ newspapers - same-day and archival coverage of the world's most influential newspapers, including Barrons, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, South China Morning Post, Le Monde, Les Echos, The Guardian and New York Times. Factiva also includes local newspapers from every corner of the globe.

3,500+ journals and magazines - access the latest issues of thousands of leading business and industry publications, including The Economist, Finanz & Wirtschaft, Satellite News, Computerworld and Journal of Organizational Analysis

500+ newswires - breaking news from Dow Jones, Reuters and The Associated Press, as well as PR Newswire, M2 Presswire and other regionally focused and industry newswires

20,000+ company reports - customized profiles of companies, from around the world

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The simultaneous user limit for this resource may result in temporary delays.

Alt-Press Watch provides full text access to alternative and independent newspapers, magazines, and journals, publications which bring perspectives, insights, and opinions not often found in mainstream journalism.

Access article databases (such as EconLit, GEOBASE, and PAIS), specialized planning collections (ICUD, NTL, and ULI Development Case Studies), and guides to conducting research in all areas of planning.

Multidisciplinary search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, repositories and the web.

PAIS International indexes journal articles, books, government documents, statistical compilations, committee reports, directories, serials, reports of public, intergovernmental, and private organizations, and most other forms of printed literature from all over the world. Electronic publications and Websites are also indexed. (Source: vendor website.)

Multi-disciplinary coverage of peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, with links to full-text where available through the library. Tracks how often articles have been cited and provides tools to analyze cited references.

Sustainable Cities Collective is an editorially independent, moderated community for leaders of major metropolitan areas, urban planning and sustainability professionals. We look to aggregate content and provide resources for all who work in or are interested in urban planning, sustainable development and urban economics.

Access to Science (Expanded), Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities, Conference Proceedings, and Book Citation Indexes. Also includes Current Chemical Reactions and Index Chemicus. Indexes Science and Social Sciences back to 1900.

Article searching tips

When searching the preceding databases, use these tips for better results:

Use wildcard characters: If searching for economic conditions, type the word econ* with an astericks. That will return economies, economic, economist and any other word that starts with [e c o n].

Use quotes: When searching for two words, quotes will search for the words when they're next to each other. Thomas Jefferson will return articles with Thomas Payne and Jefferson Starship. But when "Thomas Jefferson" is searched, only those articles with his name will be returned.

Local and State Historical Maps & Imagery

Sanborn Maps were originally created to aid the insurance industry in assessing risk. The maps only cover portions of North Carolina. They show towns at specific points in their history and provide detailed information on street layout, civic infrastructure, building type, building use, and ownership.

Users have the ability to manipulate the maps, magnify and zoom in on specific sections, and compare maps from different years. Sanborn Maps were originally created to aid the insurance industry in assessing risk. They show towns at specific points in their history and provide detailed information on street layout, civic infrastructure, building type, building use, and ownership. Sanborn maps are valuable historical tools for urban specialists, architects, geographers, genealogists, historians, planners, environmentalists, and anyone who wants to learn about the history and development of specific cities, towns, and neighborhoods.